Article: 'The Invisible Toll of Sex Testing at the Olympics.'

[RainWithSunnySpells]

This is from a few days ago, so I hope that I haven't missed an earlier thread on this article.

slate.com/life/2024/07/olympics-2024-paris-trans-intersex-sex-testing-history.html

https://archive.ph/4BzYk

'That many young athletes—trans, intersex, or cis—may have been, for decades, pulled out of elite sports for failing sex tests is already troubling. But it is especially damaging when you consider how astonishingly subjective the tests themselves were. The sexed nature of the human body exists on a spectrum: As one endocrinologist put it to journalist Katie Barnes, sex is the result of the complex “interplay and the collective of your sex chromosomes, sex hormones, your internal reproductive structures, and what gonads you have, and your external genitalia.” Yet sports officials have, since 1936, invented and reinvented ways to enforce a strict binary anyway. The first rendition of sex testing involved crude gynecological exams, like the one Dillema refused to take part in. By the 1960s, sports officials embraced chromosome testing, but this too received criticism from scientists. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to have a difference in sex development, for example, and never even know it. The pivot to hormone testing presents its own problems, seeing as all women have a natural range of testosterone levels.

Today, these long-running efforts to keep trans and intersex women out of sports have become a mainstream political weapon. Twenty-three states now restrict the ability of trans girls and women to participate in school sports. It is the more explicit and draconian version of what has been playing out, again and again, throughout competitive sports for over half a century: Trans and intersex athletes, and potentially others who failed these highly subjective tests, are being pushed out of sports before they even get a chance to become stars.'

5-ARD raised Caster's testosterone to 21 nmol/L

I'm going to nit-pick about this. Semenya is male and has normal (not raised) T levels. 5-ARD is due to a mutation and its only effect is to cause a male fœtus to develop superficially female genitalia.

Mentioning because OP said the potential ‘harm’ to privacy is that they find out through these tests.

A long time ago I saw an interview with semenya. They (singular/He) knows they are a man. Their disdain for women was palpable. It was weird because they didn’t even try to hide it. I felt they leant into it, as if in a macho bro moment. I wonder if that’s a cultural background from SA as male althletes in the U.K. would be embarrassed to behave like that.

What ever it was; It was very odd and there’s no part of them that see themselves as female. I would bet many things on that.

Oh look, somebody has a book to promote.

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

Interestingly, one of the athletes at the centre of the book (at least according to reviews) had a male DSD and on confirmation of this handed back his medals and awards.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdeněk_Koubek

It’s what the Nazis wanted, apparently.

Hence anybody currently wanting to ensure sports are fair to women (the female kind) is a Nazi.

The article is disingenuous.

We no longer do chromosomal testing because we have de facto genital testing - every time you get post-event dope tested the official watches, up close and personal, the stream of urine leaving your body. Ambiguous genitalia are reported and will prompt further investigation (as it did in the case of Caster Semenya). Blood hormone testing is primarily to catch dopers but will also obviously catch people with elevated testosterone levels who are competing as women, in addition to females who are doping.

AFAIK, the only intersex athletes are all 46,XY with AIS as other DSDs such as Turner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome etc preclude athletic development.

AFAIK, the only intersex athletes are all 46,XY with AIS as other DSDs such as Turner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome etc preclude athletic development

Turner and Klinefelter syndromes aren’t relevant for this discussion though, as there’s no genital ambiguity and they are clearly female/male at birth respectively. There’d be no suggestion that a man with Klinefelter’s enter a female category and only men have this.

There are a few XY DSDs, partial AIS, 5 alpha reductase deficiency (that caster has), ovotesticular DSD and another one with an 5 and an alpha or beta in it somewhere 😀.

To be subjected to the XY DSD testosterone restrictions the athlete needs to be:

XY
Have one of the relevant DSDs
be sensitive to androgens

The main female DSD that is mentioned in the world athletics guidelines is CAH, which in its most severe, form (21 hydroxylase deficiency) results in ambiguous genitalia at birth . Female athletes with this will - if untreated - have high levels of androgens but this doesn’t make them athletic, it makes them unwell. More likely to have PCOS, insulin resistance, weight issues etc

What a lot of nonsense. All to try and force men into women's changing rooms and sports for personal gain.

Nice women would joyfully surrender their rights and careers, and embrace being mere NPC wallpaper in the lives of Real People.

Exactly. Once. Job done.

and an alpha or beta in it somewhere 😀.

3-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency 😉

A test for testosterone levels isn't a sex test, both male and female athletes have to take that test as it is part of standard drugs testing.

If either a male or female athlete posts high testosterone levels they will be investigated for doping offences.

Ooh, get you! 😄

No trans gender person has ever won a medal at the Olympics.

The only trans women participant took part in weightlifting. She failed to complete her attempted lifts and finished last with no score.

edition.cnn.com/2021/08/02/sport/laurel-hubbard-olympics-weightlifting-spt-intl/index.html

Michael Waters has a book to flog https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1529910218/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

So what? Cheating is cheating even if you don't win. Gender doping is as reprehensible as drug doping.
Every male in a women's event is taking the place of a woman. There is a cascade of women negatively affected - opponents as well as women who lose their places.

Every male on a women's training camp, or taking advantage of a women's sports scholarship, or being sponsored to train for women's events is taking attention, opportunities, income and potential achievement away from women.

Women's sports were carved out for women to have the chance to excel in fair competition against other women. The point of women's sports is to exclude male advantage. The fact that some men are bad at sport, or want to be in the women's changing rooms is not a good or relevant reason to destroy fair competition for women.

If both FINA and the UCI had not taken steps to ban males from female competition it is extremely likely that at least three transwomen (Lia Thomas, Emily Bridges and Chelsea Wolfe) would have been competing, and winning, at the highest levels, including the Olympics. Chelsea Wolfe already got 5th place in the 2021 UCI world champs and was a sub at the 2020 Olympics. Everyone focuses on Laurel Hubbard who was basically a sad sack who bought themselves a place - the real threat came from much younger and stronger athletes. Laurel Hubbard was a 42 year old millionnaire who denied an Olympic place to a young polynesian woman from an impoverished background who he 'beat' in the pool selection.

That’s not correct.

At Tokyo, Chelsea Wolfe was an alternate on the USA BMX team, and Stephanie Barratt took part in the archery for Canada.

Both places that should have gone to women.

Was the male volleyballer or was it basketball from Brazil at the last Olympics in the female team?

Yes.

It is a distractive technique to say ‘no male trans people have won a medal as in a female sport at the Olympics’. Because the significant impact is still rippling through.

How many female athletes have been pushed out or have not continued because a male has taken their spot at a lower level, been selected for a training opportunity, won the prize money that would have allowed that female athlete to continue or because they were injured by a male athlete. Or was traumatised at having to share a single sex space during competition with a male person who should never have been included in the space/accommodation.

In fact, the ignorance of making a claim such as that as if it is in any way meaningful is off the scale and shows a significant lack of understanding of sports, and particularly female sports.

Nothing to see here! It doesn’t matter, it is not the Olympics. Women should just STFU about something like this it seems from some posters.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13660579/transgender-athletes-female-virginia-cycling-championship.html

Tiffany Abreu is the Brazilian volleyball player - not selected for Tokyo.

Thanks Sabrina! Tiffany is the one. There was speculation at the time if I remember correctly.

OMG that photo! You could have someone's eye out with that.

ETA I see this has its own thread, and the gentleman's assets are coming in for a mention there as well.

But remember women, it doesn’t matter because , well, no male athlete with a transgender identity has won a medal in the female category at the Olympics!!!

Male athletes with DSDs have won Olympic female medals.

If a biological, sex realist approach to sport is taken, then both trans identified males and males with DSDs would not be elegable for female catagories and I'm sure that Christin knows that.

No trans gender person has ever won a medal at the Olympics.

Is that the best you can do? Seriously?

Any transwoman who competes on a women's team is taking a place of a woman who should be there but isn't due to a cheating man, whether the trans woman comes first, second or last.